As all other things that are in domain of subjective, the answer to this dilemma depends on who you ask.
During the 90s It.s better with culture was a slogan for campaign meant to support different types of behavior, from avoiding pollution of the environment, through assertive communication to promotion of art.
Unfortunately, it turned into parody, people started to use it as ironical/sarcastic comment to all sorts of inappropriate behaviors and soon it was gone, without success.
Cultural institutions and events, artists` products, are soulfood; They provide content for intellectual, social, emotional growth.
Cultural institutions and individuals are just waste of money. There are many other things that can be funded instead of theaters, galleries, tribunes...for example gambling houses, reality shows, "art" that propagates "values" of self-absorbedness, pretty much anything that, instead rising one.s personality, lowers one.s bank balance.
Those photos I took yesterday and today in the very center of the city, in the front of one of the theaters, are nicely symbolically portraying how people in power treat culture and in what state culture is.
Also, they show how far we have reached as society; number of homeless persons is growing alarmingly; number of persons that behave (in public) like the rest of the world does not exist is growing alarmingly.
Gap between rich and poor is bigger every day, just as is the gap between stories on TV of how good people in our country live and reality.
Intertwined Parallel worlds.
(Yes, I know the definition of both words ;))
How is situation with the culture in your country?